It’s official, folks. After numerous reports and posts today from many different media outlets, Ziff Davis has sold 1UP and its associated sites GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, and GameTab.com to Hearst Corporation, parent company of UGO. And,sadly, Electronic Gaming Monthly is being shut down after 20 strong years of publication.

“We believe this is a smart transaction for Ziff Davis Media that places these market leading assets and teams in a great environment poised for further success. The transaction allows us to pay down debt and shift our full focus to our core PCMag Digital Network business. We thank our 1UP team members for their contributions and wish them the best of success into the future”, said Ziff Davis Media CEO Jason Young.

“Since we started UGO 11 years ago, we have served the gamer community and built a world-class online publishing platform,” said J Moses, CEO of UGO Entertainment. “The acquisition of 1UP, with its authentic voice, tenured editorial personalities and bustling user community, allows us to expand our base of quality content and represents a major step forward in UGO’s mission to become the leader in the games space.”

Being a huge fan of the 1UP Network and EGM, it was strange to find out about this news. The January 2009 issue of EGM (which is in stores now) will be the last issue of the print magazine.

And what makes things even worse is that the buyout has caused a lay-off of 30 Ziff-Davis employees, many of them very well-known journalists, including James Mielke and Shane Bettenhausen. Very sad news indeed about the lay-offs and I wish the ones let go good luck in their futures.

Source: Gamasutra

Being that this is the internet, a bunch of rumours pass across the Ripten tipline in the span of a single day, and for the most part, we try to post as many as we can. Though the cries of a thousand deluded forumgoers screaming “Crysis upgraded for mobile phones!” will always be ignored, one tip piqued my interest, coming straight out of the November issue of EGM.

According to a NeoGAF member that recieved their issue early, Quartermann’s monthly rumour section held some pretty surprising information, namely that Sony’s 1st-party blockbuster LittleBigPlanet would have Disney-related DLC, as well as other third-party characters. Of course, this single piece of news wouldn’t suffice to fill Quartermann’s rumour section as a whole, so hit the jump to read the full list of rumours.

• Devil May Cry style Strider game
• Lucas Arts handing Rogue Squadron rights to new publisher. All games released on one Wii disk with enhanced visuals and Wii controls.
• Kojima wants to make a FPS game. Has been seen talking to Infinity Ward, Guerilla Games, and Treyarch
• Fast domestic release of the Disgaea side scroller
• non-Sony property LittleBigPlanet DLC coming very soon including Disney and characters from 3rd party games
• Every single 2009 PSP game will also be offered as a download

According to the February issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, it’s a definite “maybe”. Of course that could just be a typo.

Towards the end of EGM’s Game Over section, they always give a little sneak peek at the next month’s issue. This time, they happen to have Ninja Gaiden II listed in the previews section, but they have it listed for both the 360 and the PS3.

Now, I’m not one to start rumors, so let me just tell you now that I find this extremely hard to believe. I’ve been a reader of EGM for over 15 years, and I’ve seen mistakes like this before. Yes, I’m saying it’s a mistake — a typographical error.

Image courtesy of myself because it’s my magazine and I paid for it. The content, of course, is the property of EGM and Ziff Davis Media.

While it’s entirely possible that EGM knows something we don’t and inadvertently let the ninja out of the bag, I dismiss this idea for one main reason: Microsoft is publishing the game. Unless Tecmo and Team Ninja decided to let Sony or someone else (maybe themselves) publish Ninja Gaiden II for the PS3, I doubt the game is coming to the PS3 by way of Microsoft.

Then again, maybe EGM does know something, but they aren’t allowed to say, in which case they “accidentally” listed the game for both consoles. Again, I find this very hard to believe. They would all be killed!

EGM’s final page is all about the PS3 and how it’s going to have a big year. If EGM really did know that Ninja Gaiden II was coming to the PS3, I don’t think they would have excluded it from the conversation. You know, that would actually be some news worth talking about, wouldn’t it?

Unless you think this is how Ninja Gaiden II for PS3 would be announced, and it’s not just a three-letter mistake in the back of a magazine, I would just put this one in the “wishful thinking” department. Although the shockwaves could be significant, consider this just a simple error on EGM’s part. Great job, guys!

For those who missed it, EGM (according to Editor Dan Hsu) was supposedly cut off from receiving preview and review copies of games by Sony, Midway, and Ubisoft due to what the publishers felt where unfavorable review scores and or practices.

While I can understand why Dan may have felt the need to call out the poor sportsmanship of Sony’s Sports Division, the low blow of Midway’s Mortal Kombat Team, and the stealthy exit of Ubisoft, I question his decision to do so, and can’t help but feel that an unnecessary trend is beginning to take place.

My feelings are that gaming sites, as well as printed publications, will now start to air their dirty laundry in an effort to proactively defend themselves, and reassure readers that they are on the up and up.

I sure hope that I am wrong, because while I am not saying that this is the case here with EGM, I really don’t want to be reading about how enormous publications/websites will now have to resort to buying games (just like their readers) in order to review them — Boo freaking hoo.

Most gaming outlets (including us) do not receive every game that they review directly from the publisher in advance, and at no cost. In fact, many purchase the majority of their games just like you do.

While I do not necessarily agree with the way the publishers treated EGM here, they are free to decide how they want to distribute their product. Below you will find a reprint of Dan’s editorial from the February issue of EGM via his blog page on 1up.com

Gamemakers have been taking issue with our reviews for as long as EGM’s been around (almost 19 years now). It goes with the territory: Be honest and tough with your critiques, and you’re going to piss just about everybody off at some point. But when I took over as editor-in-chief in 2001, I also wanted us to get more real with our previews. I was tired of the press-release rehashes our industry had become accustomed to, so I asked for more sincerity and opinions from our writers and editors. Naturally, you have to be fair — the products aren’t finished yet, after all — but judging from reader feedback, our opinionated previews have been a hit.

Except with some game publishers, of course. Less-than-totally-positive previews don’t sit well with those who are used to those press-release rehashes. Combine that with our candid reviews, and you can imagine the consequences that we have to face constantly.

For the time being, you’ll get little, late, or no coverage of the following products: anything Mortal Kombat (they didn’t like our reviews), anything from Sony’s sports department (ditto), and now, anything from Ubisoft (it seems our coverage of Assassin’s Creed was the last straw). So in case you’re wondering why you’re seeing so little of these games in our magazines and on our websites, now you know.

What do we do now? Nothing. We won’t treat these products or companies any differently, and we’ll just cover them to the best of our own abilities, with or without their support. Because, after all, we’re writing for you, the reader — not them.

In closing, while I agree that these scenarios do occur, I personally don’t think we should be bickering about them to our readers, and I truly hope that this does not become the norm.

In this months issue of EGM’s Rumor Mill, Quarterman reported that Konami is developing another Metal Gear game for the PSP. Apparently it isn’t going to be a spin off such as we’ve seen from Portable Ops. The new title is said to “Hearken back to the early days”.

Could this be a new business model for Konami? It seems the Japanese development house has taken a keen interest in portable development of late. With the launch of Portable Ops Plus, and Silent Hill Origins all in one month. It seems Konami seeks to fill in the gaps between their triple A titles with portable games.